Prague Numero 2

Prague Numero 2!!!

Friday afternoon Monika wasn't feeling well so Adrienne and I took on Prague on our own. We did it all - we got lost, we wandered, we visited Old Town Square, we ate, we shopped, we walked up the short, chubby version of the Eiffel Tower and we ended the day with a nice dinner with Monika and Vaclav.

This was at Old Town Square - St. Nicholas Church

Inside the church

Here's a short video - a feel of the church

This is the Prague Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square

 

This is the clock doing it's thang - does it every hour. The clock recently celebrated its 600th anniversary just 3 weeks ago.

Adrienne and I with our gelato =)

Here is a short chubby version of the Eiffel Tower. Prague has a tower that looks like the CN Tower as well.

Sort of looks like the Eiffel Tower... ish

Overlooking Prague from the top of the short chubby Eiffel Tower!

 Adrienne and I trying Hot Wine... Monika recommended it.

Here's Adrienne trying hot wine - her face at the beginning is priceless =)

Friday night we met up with Monika and Vaclav for dinner for dinner. We had to go restaurant hunting to find one that wasn't full - this was one potential. Unfortunately it was full. But it was really cool because it had BOWLING inside the restaurant! 

Monika and her boyfriend Vaclav at Back Doors, where we ate dinner

Adrienne and my Czech dinner (and our cocktails at the top of the photo)

The wonderful breakfast Monika made me Saturday morning - I tried to write PRAHA in the Maple Syrup that Monika brought back with her from Canada (if you can read the PRAHA, you have very very good interpretive reading skills!)

Monika and I outside her parents' house on my last day in Prague

This is at Vysehrad; the place where Prague was originally founded

Overlooking Prague

This picture took skills - the camera was balanced on a fence and I had to put it on 10 second timer and run down a set of stairs, over to the wall, hop onto the wall and pose for the picture. This shot actually 2 tries - not because I wasn't fast enough the first time, but because the first time I crossed over the wrong leg =P

 Back in Amsterdam! I flew with easyJet . Everything on the plane was orange - the attendants' clothes, the seat covers, the magazines, even the trash bag was orange!

 After I landed in Amsterdam, Jaewoo surprised me by meeting me at the airport and we quickly headed home then to MuseumNacht (Museum Night) where 45 museums in Amsterdam were open to the public with drinks and dancing music from 8pm - 6am!! We didn't stay out until 6am though!

The first "museum" we visited was the zoo in the dark!! We couldn't really see much, but our tour guide shared some really interesting facts about Artis Zoo. It is a very small zoo - it is in the middle of the city and is limited in space. However they have some cool animals - here is a vulture. I love the creepy look - it suits the vulture!

This is in the aquarium of the Artis Zoo

This is inside the Van Gogh museum - there were cocktails, dancing and even live music!

This is what is believed to have been the last painting painted by Van Gogh

And now I'm back in Amsterdam. Had a quiet day on Sunday after my 4 full days in Prague - went to church in the morning. Still loving the fact that I can understand the English Mass. I've missed being able to sing along. Laundry is almost done. Next weekend 5 of us are seeing Cirque du Soleil Totem. I've heard great reviews about the show.

Some exciting news from work today: LEVS Architecten has been nominated for the Dutch Architect of the Year Award 2010! There are two finalists in our category and we're one of them! Click HERE to view the announcement. It's in Dutch, so unless you understand the article, you may have to google translate the text if you wish to read through it.

Six weeks tomorrow I fly home... I have a lot to do in the next month and a half =)

Prague Numero 1

My Journey to Prague (Praha is the proper, Czech name) started off at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport... where apparently they're already all decked out for Christmas - tinsel everywhere, decorations and of course, Christmas trees. Little early, no?! Kim Milanes tells me the Eatons Centre is already all decked out for Christmas as well. I feel stores switch over to the Christmas theme earlier and earlier every year!

Wednesday night pizza!!

Once Adrienne joined us in Prague Thursday afternoon, Monika showed us her university. This is the Narodni Technicka Knihovna (National Technical Library) beside the building with the architecture program.

Inside the library - there are funny drawings drawns around the atrium space in the middle of the library.

Such as these (click on the photos for larger picture):

This is how I often feel at school... tied to my computer:

  Here's the atrium of Monika's school. The building is 14 floors high - that's a little taller than our 3 level School of Architecture in Cambridge.

Monika and Adrienne in front of the library =)

 Adrienne, Monika and I went for lunch to have some traditional Czech food. Dumplings and some sort of meat (I forget) but it was very tasty!!! And we tried Czech beer (it was huge)...

...and I finished the entire thing!!

 Monika and I

In front of Prague Castle (where the President lives)

Monika and I inside the grounds of Prague Castle

View of  Praha

Changing of the guards at Prague Castle

At Prague Castle

The Dancing House by Frank Gehry

Malostranska Metro Station

Lentilky Chocolates - they taste similar to smarties, but are about double the size and are not quite as good!

 Tough biker bear... hahaha... had to laugh!!

 Prague Numero 2 to be posted tomorrow!! =)

Prague Bound!

Firstly, my blog may lack in updates over the next few days as I will be in Prague with Adrienne visiting my wonderful friend Monika!! I'll be back in A'dam Saturday night.

I just have to vent on something for a moment... Recycling... not popular in Western Europe... apparently. They don't pick up recycling at our apartment and I've had this dilemma of what to do with my paper and plastics. I can't. I just can't. I can't put paper in the garbage. Laura and I even discussed this oh-so-important issue while in Paris. I have to close my eyes every time I put paper, plastic or glass in the garbage cans.

Dilemma solved... for the most part.

I found a recycling unit on my way to church last Sunday. But seriously - this little thing is supposed to serve the entire neighbourhood? I mean, I didn't see many of these around. At home one of those units would fill up within a matter of a week or two!

Let's RECYCLE more people!

Check out these huge tidbits from Stefania's dinner last Friday!




Italian Dinner!!



Tonight my bike was misbehaving. It must have been mad at me. In other words, it broke. A little piece of plastic that is supposed to hold the tire fender off the tire broke so the fender kept falling down and locking the wheel, preventing the bike from moving. Great. I ended up walking to the bus stop (which isn't a short walk) slumped over my bike holding the fender off my wheel. One person stopped his car to ask if everything was alright. I replied: "Yes thank you. I just need to get to the bus" and he goes "then ride your bike. It'll be much faster!" and he drives away. 

So I get to the bus stop, back is aching from having walked bent over looking like a weirdo, and I ask the bus driver if I can bring the bike onto the bus with me. He was like "uh, NO!" and I was like "please, my bike is broken and I can't ride it" and he goes "well that's not my problem" and shuts the door. Wow, thanks. He wasn't even polite about it. I don't know what the problem was - the bus wasn't even busy and the buses even have a designated open area on the bus for strollers and wheelchairs. I don't think I was asking a lot. I mean, my bike was broken. I was in a pickle. So... I walked my bike home. Took me almost an hour and a half to get back. At least it wasn't raining. Here was my temporary fix - tying a plastic bag to the fender, which I had to keep tightening as I walked home.




And since I was walking home, I took a couple pictures. Here's one - I pass this everyday =)



Prague in less than 24 hours!!! I'm flying with EasyJet. Round trip cost less than 80 euros. Good deal.

I will blog again when I'm back in Amsterdam. Until then, good morning, good evening and goodnight! (The Truman Show - another great movie!)

Flashbacks!!

Here are some flashbacks from some of my adventures!!

Firstly, this font is supposed to be Helvetica. However blogspot and I are having some issues today and Helvetica isn't working SO this font is Trebuchet. I'm still trying the different fonts - seeing what I like.

Last Thursday evening night I went to another lecture (in English) at the University by Waterlooplein (a 6 minute walk from my apartment). It was really interesting! It was about the design of train stations and the really cool thing about it was that I had been to 4/5 train stations he talked about - Rotterdam Centraal, Den Haag Centraal, Amsterdam Centraal and Schiphol (the airport). Utrecht was the one I hadn't been to yet, which will hopefully change, as I would like to visit Utrecht at some point.

Now let's go back to the *PAST*

New Jersey to Zurich =)

My last glimpse of North America for 4 months!

London =)

That was a funny street show!! I enjoyed it a lot. Haha in the middle, right before this video he got a little girl (in the video wearing the red shirt) to come to the middle, stand in front of the unicycle and when he counted to 3 the crowd had been instructed to cheer, yell, applaud and whistle so that other people would come running to see what was going on, and the little girl bowed as though she had just finished a spectacular dismount off the unicycle and the people who had just come would be disappointed they JUST missed the amazing acrobatic stunts. It was really silly, but very funny. 

Plus de Paris =)

The street show in London was funny. The street show in Paris was... just plain strange.

Eiffel Tower

Not something you get to do everyday =)

Why hello dude in red!

Hey! I see home!!! It's somewhere out there... 6014km that way!!

And just in case you were considering it, they prefer you not throw things off the Eiffel Tower. Got it? Merci!

 

Rotterdam =)

 And because Rotterdam was so special I'm posting a video of the awards ceremony from Worlds!!

The Russians were fantastic. The Americans were very very close to winning the Gold Medal, and although they were a bit disappointed with their silver, they looked amazing. Another team that I want to mention are the Japanese. In my opinion, their gymnastics has been under appreciated these last couple of years. But congratulations to Rei Tanaka from Japan who won the Longines Prize for Elegance! The Japanese were among the most entertaining teams on the floor, and definitely beautiful to watch. 

And that's it for now. Prague in 2 days. I love it here in Europe. CIAO!